A big story on CNN is that the United States Postal Service is talking about cutting mail deliveries by one day a week due to plunging demand. This is spoken of in the sort of tone one might discuss the suggestion that the government begin incinerating live puppies.
I’ve always wondered; why the heck do they deliver every day? Here in Canada, a country with more or less the same system and geographic challenges, I get regular service five days a week. Why? There is nothing that comes in the mail that is so important that a 50/50 chance of getting it one day later will matter; if something is urgent, it’ll be sent by courier. I don’t know what it’s like in the USA, but here you get a letter in two to five days. If it averages 2.5 to 5.5, big whoop.
If it’d save money I’d happily have them cut service to three days a week.
I’ve always wondered why we have Saturday delivery. If UPS doesn’t deliver on Saturday, it’s not like the lack of Saturday delivery is going to hurt their competitiveness
As Americans, we’re suffering from “b…b…but we’ve always done it that way” syndrome. I can see in our lifetime the paper mail system going through a complete overhaul. I’m confident that the system is currently bloated due to lesser amounts of mail being sent and frankly, I’m surprised it’s taken this long.
Of course we’ll all survive, but when you’re used to getting mail on Saturdays all your life, it’ll be a change if that stops.
And by the way, in the U.S., local mail is normally delivered in one day, which beats that “2.5-5.5” days you stated was the case for Canada. So without Saturday delivery, that’s a fair amount of mail that will have its delivery time doubled. Especially if you live in a large urban area (like I do) so you get a lot of local mail.
I don’t care all that much, but I will say that making the service less convenient is not likely to be the best way to slow the loss of customers. Clearly the convenience of email (and even fax), and the speed and reliability of FedEx et al. has driven much of the dropoff in business. But another reason I try to avoid using USPS is that the customer service is typically horrible, post office locations and hours are inconvenient (compared to UPS/FedEx stores, for example) and speed of delivery is very unpredictable. It’s just not a pleasant experience, so the alternatives are even more attractive than they’d otherwise be. Some of those things should be fixable without increasing costs substantially, and in the long run it’s better to stop losing customers than to keep losing them and cut costs to make up for it.
IIRC, they sometimes do a Saturday delivery on the Saturday before Christmas, but otherwise I haven’t seen a Saturday mail delivery in the time I’ve lived in Australia.
It’s never really been a big deal, IMHO. Nothing else business-y is happening on a Saturday for the most part (Offices and Government Departments generally being closed), and even if you did get something that needed prompt attention, there’s not much you can do until everyone’s open for business again on Monday anyway.
In this case, the “because it’s always been done this way” folks may have a point. If the Post Office, who knows that “it’s always been done this way,” is actually considering changing things, you know something must be Terribly, Terribly Wrong.
So, the USPS will send your letter all the way across the country for 43 cents, and you’re trying to compare it with UPS and FedEx, who charge about 25 times, complaining about the speed of delivery because it isn’t overnight? And what exactly about the customer service is so horrible? As long as you aren’t expecting instant gratification of every demand, and can bear to wait your turn, I’ve never had any problem with the customer service at the post office. Once I get to the window, they always provide me services politely and effectively.
Being open on Saturday is important for the many people whose work schedule doesn’t allow them to come in M-F. I suppose delivery itself is not so important on Saturday.
Tuesday is a normal delivery day. The reason it’s light is because there are few posts (residentialy) on Saturday.
Businesses rely on full service postal deliveries and it would harm the economy if deliveries were cut back. it would also affect deliveries of medicine and any other time sensitive item.
Karyn mentioned home-bound folks who receive their meds via US Mail. I think that would be an issue. Yes, there are other options, but they’re expensive for some. I wonder how many people get their meds via USPS…
I doubt it would hurt the economy by closing for at least one more day of the week, and it would actually help by cutting out some more of their red ink.
I’d like to see both Saturday and Sunday closed, along with possibly Wednesday for cost saving measures. If they don’t cut at least one more day a week closing, another cost increase will be on the horizon soon with these multi billion dollar annual losses.
People that have medicines or other time senstive delivered mail know to plan ahead. At least one day more without their mail isn’t going to kill them. Just like no Sunday mail hasn’t either.
I’ve been thinking this for years. They could easily cut Saturday and one other day. It’s not like we expect mailed things to get anywhere within a one day time frame. Even people getting medications. If not getting mail on a certain day would screw their meds up then they’re waiting too late to order a refill.
If this does happen be prepared to listen about all the postal workers who lose their jobs.
Then we could eliminate Thursday, because that’s in the middle between Wednesday and Saturday. Who needs Thursday?
So with only Monday, Wednesday and Friday, why do we need Wednesday? And with only Monday and Friday left, since everyone goes away for the weekend early and comes back late, let’s lop off every second Monday and alternate Fridays.
Do we need mail delivery at all? Why can’t everyone just use the Internet like decent folks?
